E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mind and matter Christian Tetzlaff brings Brahms to Tanglewood BY DAVID WEININGER

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff is one of those guys you immediately want to describe as "intellectual." His thin, bespectacled face and close-cropped blond hair put you in mind of a German professor — someone penetratingly intelligent yet distant. His musicianship must be just like that, you think: penetrating yet abstract, perhaps even a bit cold.

None of that is wrong, but it’s certainly an incomplete picture of this remarkable musician. Yes, the 38-year-old Tetzlaff is an intelligent and serious musician, one who made both his professional and his US debuts with the Schoenberg Violin Concerto, a piece as thorny and difficult as any. And he can hold forth persuasively on the religious underpinnings of Bach’s music for solo violin. (He could do so even back in the days when such extra-musical reflection wasn’t yet received wisdom.) And yes, he’s German.

But the Hamburg-born violinist is more than just a mind with an instrument. He’s also one of the most complete musicians around today, praised as highly for his Beethoven and his Mendelssohn performances as for his Bartók and his Ligeti. Critics often remark on his formidable technique, but they’re equally quick to note how immediate and communicative his playing is. After remarking on his obvious technical fluency in a review of his BSO debut some years ago, Lloyd Schwartz wrote in these pages that Tetzlaff "can also play a simple, singing line that melts the heart." When he made his debut with the Met Orchestra in New York a few months ago, his playing of the Berg Concerto was universally lauded, even as the conducting of James Levine was not.

Moreover, Tetzlaff has that rare ability to make a careful listener hear familiar repertory in fresh, even surprising ways, as he demonstrates on two new CDs. One the first, he plays Bartók’s two sonatas for violin and piano with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes (Virgin Classics). These are among the Hungarian composer’s most angular works, and many emphasize their tough dissonance. Tetzlaff and Andsnes find other parts of his personality present. Listening to the variety of colors in the First Sonata reminds one of Bartók’s enthusiasm for Debussy. The eerie slides and strange "night sounds" are all Bartók, however, and they’re brought out to great effect. Tetzlaff also plays the Sonata for Solo Violin, and I can’t imagine anyone making this virtuoso homage to Bach sound as polished and beautiful as it does here, not even Tetzlaff himself in his first recording of the piece from the early 1990s.

Also just released is a disc of the three violin sonatas of Brahms, in live recordings from the 2002 Heimbach Chamber Music Festival (EMI). Tetzlaff has another fine musical partner here: the festival’s director, Lars Vogt. Some of the performances may seem a bit detached, such as the songful opening of the G-major sonata. But later it becomes clear that the restraint was in the service of laying out the movement’s structure and architecture, so that when the climax arrives, its force is all the greater. Tetzlaff and Vogt feed off the contrasting characters within each piece, such as the alternation between lyricism and dance in the A-major’s middle movement. And they provide as involving a rendition of the D-minor sonata as one could hope for, including a gorgeous slow movement. Anyone looking for Perlman’s open-hearted sentiment may be disappointed, but these are performances full of new insights.

Tetzlaff and Vogt bring the Brahms program to Tanglewood next week, playing the three sonatas at Ozawa Hall on Thursday August 19. If that doesn’t satisfy your Brahms jones, you can stick around until Saturday, when Tetzlaff plays the Double Concerto with the BSO under conductor Andrey Boreyko (Claudio Bohórquez handles the cello part). That’s part of another Brahms program, along with the Variations on a Theme by Haydn and the Second Symphony. Tickets are $15 to $45 for the first concert, $16 to $82 for the second; and call (888) 266-1200.

STILL IN TOWN. Although it seems that most music groups have headed for the hills by now, the Boston Chamber Music Society is sticking around to offer a series of concerts in Longy School’s air-conditioned Pickman Hall. Next Saturday, it offers a program of Bach’s E-flat Cello Suite, Fauré’s A-major Violin Sonata, and Dvorak’s fiery F-minor Piano Trio. Longy is at 27 Garden Street in Harvard Square, and tickets are $25; call (617) 349-0086.